As “21st century artists” we tend to underestimate the fact that in 5 seconds we can find on youtube a video of Igor Stravinsky conducting his own pieces. Here is Bernstein, remembering us how lucky we are (without the youtube part).

We 20th-century artists are constantly in the position of having to put ourselves back in time, on trying to recapture those past epochs.

Originally aired on January 31, 1960 on CBS Television as part of its Ford Presents series, this program was entitled “The Creative Performer.” The entire show is actually three performances — by Gould, the soprano Eileen Farrell (singing the “Suicidio!” aria from *La Gioconda*), & Igor Stravinsky (conducting the last three scenes of his ballet *The Firebird*) — punctuated with scintillating musicological lectures by Maestro-Professor Bernstein, who is arguably the star of the show.

No matter how much we study, how much tradition we heard of, no matter how much insight we might have, it is always to some extent: Guess work

Leonard Bernstein

What we would give for a stereophonic record of Mozart playing one of his own piano concertos…

There is a humongous quantity of musical documents online. I tend myself to underestimate its proportions and the possibility we have to access it. A video of Igor Stravinsky conducting his own pieces. Of Bernstein introducing Gould. Of Shostakovich talking about his compositions.

The purpose of this blog is to collect and display a selection of video resources that I find particularly significative in the classical music world.